Experts say a 25-ton piece from a Chinese rocket booster will crash down to Earth this weekend. No one knows where it may land. | BISouthAfrica
At this point, it is impossible to accurately estimate where the rocket stage will fall.
How fast the debris zips through space can lead to huge discrepancies in predictions, McDowell added. If you're an hour off,"because it's going at 17,000 miles an hour, you're 17,000 miles off in where it's going to come down, and that's the big challenge with all this," he said. Normally, after a launch, rockets push themselves into the atmosphere and fall back to Earth over remote ocean areas like the South Pacific — a process called"controlled reentry." It's not clear why China hasn't designed or programmed the Long March 5B to do that.
Robin Dickey, a space policy analyst at the Aerospace Corporation, said that current debris-mitigation guidelines and long-term sustainability guidelines from the UN's Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space include recommendations to minimise the risk posed to people and property on Earth from uncontrolled reentries, both of which have been supported by China."The problem is, is that they're not very technical or specific, and they're also non-binding.
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